


favorite colour

by nibling (twistedsisters)



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: F/M, PTSD implied, weed smoking as is typical for most fics i write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-01-16
Packaged: 2019-03-05 11:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13386852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedsisters/pseuds/nibling
Summary: Q utilizes one of Hob's old talents for some marital bonding.





	favorite colour

**Author's Note:**

> Some background:  
> -Quranis/Q was a supervisor for a government branch dedicated to finding magical items - she was essentially Hob and his party's manager and sent them on missions and would purchase anything they found on the government's behalf.  
> -On a mission, they faced off against a pit fiend and were eaten, regurgitated, and frozen in crystal (like a nastier Han Solo situation) for 150 years. Q, who stayed behind as usual, lived through the next 150 years of an uprising and apocalyptic situation alone, afraid, and guilty. This is mentioned several times.   
> -Ezmerine is a party member who, after the campaign ended, became the chief of police in the city. "Chaotic neutral" is putting it lightly.

“Are you sure you know how to do that?”

Q looked up from the tray in her lap, a strand of her hair falling free onto her forehead. “Of course I do.”

“You sure?”

She huffed. “Yes, Hob. I’m the foremost archaeologist in the country, an expert on magical artifacts, and while you were frozen in crystal for over a century, I was out here. Having experiences. I think I know how to roll a joint.”  
“So you’re rolling it sideways on purpose?” 

Q looked down and blinked. “Hm.” She’d been wondering why there was such a high paper-to-leaf ratio, but hadn’t said anything for fear of looking foolish. So much for that.

“The shortest, thickest joint possible,” Hob teased, sitting next to her and easing the tray from her lap and onto his. “How thoughtful.”

“Only appropriate for the shortest, thickest man I know,” she said, very serious.

Hob stuck his tongue out at her and selected a piece of rolling paper that wasn’t unevenly soaked in his wife’s spit. Q watched as he deftly rolled a much longer and thinner joint in about half the time it had taken her to mangle her attempt.

“I didn’t know you knew how to do this,” she said, watching him twist one end shut. 

He smiled. “Q. I lived in an almost entirely halfling-populated suburb thinking I was the only person who really understood anything about the world. This is practically the  _ only _ thing I know how to do.” He held the final product up for inspection, one eyebrow cocked. “Shall we?”

Q held it unsteady in her fingers at first as he produced a small flame from one hand and lit the end. The flame was too close entirely to her face for her liking, and she jerked away from it as soon as she could, inhaling a little too fast and choking on the acrid, unpleasant smoke. The experience reminded her of visiting the dragon Aavarkshaza: hyperconscious of her breath, throat aching, surrounded by sickening smoke. This time, though, she’d breathed it voluntarily. She wondered, briefly, what the young Quranis - the one who had had no bonds, whose only purpose was to stay alive and acquire treasure - would think of her now.

“Woah! Okay, here, drink this -” Hob took the joint from her and replaced it with a cup of water, which she drank from eagerly. “I didn’t expect you to take such a big hit.”

“I wasn’t expecting such a terrible taste,” Q rasped.

He hummed. “Fair enough. It isn’t great.” He took a long drag and exhaled a thick cloud, looking as contemplative as one sampling a fine wine. No cough, Q noticed, a little embarrassed at her reaction. “Yeah,” he said finally. “Not the best stuff I’ve had.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, feeling awkward and out of place and not sure of why. Unused to feeling inadequate or unpracticed, she supposed.

Hob, to his credit, seemed surprised and hurt on her behalf. “Don’t be! Don’t be at all.” He placed one hand over hers and rubbed his thumb in small, soft circles. “We can stop, if you want. Toss it all. Never do it again.”

Q smiled a little. She liked the newly considerate man he’d become since emerging from the crystal more than she’d ever thought possible. Before, he’d cared a lot, and loudly. That had been nice in its own way and in very small doses; but back then she’d had very little time for romance and even less interest in him, specifically, as a partner. She’d found him over-eager, over-loud, and, frankly, a little stupid. More and more each day, though, she was pleased to have her first impression proven wrong. 

“No,” she said, shaking her head and sitting up straighter. “I wanted to do this. Let’s finish it.”

“It’s not a contest,” he said, laughing. “And I don’t want you to do it if it hurts you.”

Q frowned. She felt a little strange, but certainly not intoxicated. “Is there anything that doesn’t taste like… shit?”

Hob rolled his head to one side, legs swinging against the bed frame. “Hmm. Oh! I might, actually.” He set the tray to one side and slid from the bed, hands on his hips. “Stay here.” He trotted out the door and disappeared from sight, though she could hear his little feet taking the stairs two at a time, then his hands rummaging and clattering through the pantry. The corners of her mouth twitched up despite herself, and before she knew it he was back with a small pouch in one hand. 

He hopped back onto the bed beside her and placed the first joint in his lips to hold, pulling the tray onto his lap. He quickly started rolling a second, placing in a small amount of something dried and fragrant from the pouch.

“Tea?” Q said, nose wrinkled. 

“Lavender,” Hob said around the joint in the corner of his mouth. He set it onto the tray and finished the second, holding it up for her to inspect once more. “It’s good. Trust me. Here, this one’s just for you.”  
“Can you handle a whole one on your own?” She was nervous for him - tough, yes, but so small - and, were she being really honest, herself.

“Yes!” he said defensively. “I’m a grown man. Don’t be rude.”  
She leaned down and kissed his forehead, one hand on the back of his neck. He sighed and leaned against her, nearly fumbling the paper in his hands. He managed, despite some shivering, to keep his grip on the tray and the joint, which he handed to her when she pulled away with a sly smile on her face.

She placed it between her lips, nervous about coughing and seeming foolish again, and in his hand the small flame crackled again, and - It was odd. It certainly wasn’t what she’d expected and she couldn’t say that it was how she’d like her herbs to be used, but it was definitely more pleasant than the first attempt. Coughs came, but not as hard and not as many.

“See? It’s good, right?”

“Well, it smells better.” Q examined the rolling work. In another life, Hob might have had a very successful career quilling paper. _Not that I needed to see this to know he’s good with his hands. ...Gods, am I getting stoned? Is it horny like this?_ _  
_ Hob finished his joint long before she finished hers, him taking impossibly huge inhales compared to her smaller ones, although the (failed) smoke rings did slow him down some. He laid with his head in her lap as she finished, humming some silly tune from a century ago that she could just barely remember him singing in her old office. It was almost mechanical - hand to mouth, inhale, hand down, hold, exhale, begin again - and she didn’t need to pay attention to the motions to the point where she burned her fingers on the cherry and nearly dropped it in Hob’s hair. 

“Window,” Hob said, yawning. Q flicked it expertly through the curtains, only realizing after watching it soar through with no obstacle that she hadn’t been sure if the window was open. She giggled a little and fell back onto the bed, hair fanning around her. Hob crawled up and snuggled beside her, one hand resting on the shelf of her ribs.

“I like this now,” she said. “It’s good, I’ve decided.”  
Hob sat up a little and grinned, his face a glowing moon. Poets sometimes said things about plucking the moon from the sky, she thought, and she’d like to pluck his smile from the open air and keep it like a pressed flower. “You’re high,” he said, mock stern.

“Yes. I’m a drug fiend now. Don’t tell Ezmerine.”

He snorted. “Listen, I know she’s the sheriff, but I really don’t think -”  
“She’s very good at her job and is in no way a threat to public safety. Do try to take my crimes seriously,” Q said, sitting up on her elbows to stare at him firmly. It was about three seconds before she burst into laughter and flopped onto her back again. 

“You are an absolute madwoman,” he teased, climbing on top of her to dig his fingers into her side, tickling her as she shrieked. “What am I going to do with you!”

She opened her mouth to say some retort - she didn’t know what, but she’d come up with something as it left her mouth, she was sure - but the thought of it died. He was smiling again, warm on top of her, eyes glazed and red but dancing and bright. She reached up without thinking and cupped his cheeks with both hands, tugging him down to her lips and kissing him, quickly, on the nose and cheeks and the corners of his mouth.

“Oh, worm?” Hob mumbled. Q knew the tone - it was the embarrassed, shy voice he always used when she was affectionate, even if they were in private. It wasn’t, she knew, based in actual shame as much as it was his belief that she was too good for him. The last vestige of how he used to freeze up around her, shy and lovestruck and fumbling. Hell, he was still all of those things.

She pressed her face into his neck, felt his hands go to her shoulders. “I love you,” she said quietly, and the force with which she meant it threatened to utterly overwhelm the feelings of her buzz and bring her to tears.

“I love you too,” he whispered, kissing the tip of one ear. 

The lump in her throat - the dam holding back the flood of tears and gushing emotion - threatened to falter and release the torrent roiling in her chest. “Roll me another one,” she said, desperately.

Hob pulled back in disbelief. “I think you’ve had enough, young lady. You’re cut off.” His expression changed - subtly, but enough that she noticed, even as out of her element as she was. Something in his eyes. A recognition. He leaned down, kissed her forehead, and rolled off, pulling her head to his chest and running his fingers through her hair, gently tugging out the tangles. It was what he did when she was overwhelmed, when she’d wake up with nightmares, when she wasn’t as successful at compartmentalizing the sight of her charges regurgitated and frozen and the fear, the utter terror, she had lived in for the next century and a half. Nearly every time he’d done it, he hadn’t needed to ask her what was wrong. She hadn’t needed to say anything at all.

Q sighed and settled against him, her arms snaking around his torso and her face pressed just over his heart, warm and strong and full.

**Author's Note:**

> Is having characters I love smoke weed too big a trend of mine at this point? Who cares.   
> Hob is a halfling bard/druid and Q is an elven rogue. I love them utterly. Song title is, yes, carly rae jepsen's song because it reminds me of them.  
> My tumblr is transmollymauks.tumblr.com!


End file.
